The most liked Instagram post ever is a gallery of Lionel Messi celebrating Argentina’s World Cup victory, thesportsbay.com reports.
The player garnered more than 71 million likes days after sharing it, and the number keeps growing.
In the World Cup final on Sunday in Qatar, Argentina defeated France on penalties for their first championship in 36 years.
Messi’s Instagram photo broke the previous record, which was held by a straightforward image of an egg, by receiving millions more likes.
In just two days, Messi’s “World Champions” post has garnered more than 70 million likes, shattering the all-time record held for almost four years by @world_record_egg, which in 2019 wrested the title from an Instagram post where Kylie Jenner announced her daughter Stormi’s name.
Although Chris Godfrey, the London advertising creative behind the egg concept, only needed 18.2 million likes to pull off the stunt at the time, the image continued to rack up engagement and comments afterward, settling comfortably around 54 million likes. There’s even a Discord server for the “Egg Gang” that remains active to this day.
After the World Cup final, Guinness World Records posted a series of records broken by the victor, noting Messi had surpassed Germany’s Lothar Matthäus for the record of most World Cup matches played, with 26 – as well as four other records:
11 – most World Cup Man of the Match awards
19 – most World Cup appearances as captain
5 – most appearances in World Cup tournaments by a male player
First person to assist (a goal) at five different World Cups
